Brad Bird says the media is being unfair to John Carter

A lot of people talk about media coverage of movies, but few of them understand it first-hand as well as Brad Bird. Bird got his start directing Iron Giant, Ratatouille, and The Incredibles for Pixar, then moved onto 3D animation, CGI-ing “Tom Cruise” in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Plus, he’s Larry Bird’s brother. Now, Bird has taken to Twitter to defend John Carter, from fellow Pixartisan Andrew Stanton, which Bird says is being treated unfairly by the media.

“The showbiz press complains about big-budget sequels & remakes, but when a big NEW film like JOHN CARTER arrives, support is nonexistent,” he tweeted. Clarifying, he added, “I dont mean the ‘press’ press…I mean the industry prognosticators who bagged on ‘Ratatouille,’ ‘Wall-E‘ & ‘Up‘ before they came out.” He also said, “The loudest complainers about JC haven’t seen it!” [Twitter via ThePlaylist]

Woof, don’t call it ‘JC’, please, it gives me bad Matrix sequel flashbacks. You have to tell me if this is another Christ metaphor so I can avoid it, it’s the law. Anyway, what Bird is probably talking about is an article in The Daily Beast recently that claimed John Carter would have to make $400 million to break even, which Disney of course denies.

I’m not going to argue financial figures, because I don’t have access to Disney’s records, and I’m not an expert on economics. As a blogger, I go into town once a month and get confused when vendors refuse to barter for sweatpants. But I will say that Disney have only themselves to blame for their awful marketing campaign. It’s like they’ve spent the last three months between November (when the first trailer was released) and now trying their best to convince us that the lead character’s name was indeed John Carter. As if they assumed they’d be like, “Here’s our movie, it’s called John Carter!” And people would be like, “John Carter? No way, dude, I call bullshit.”

The exchange: “You… are… John Carter of Earth?” “…Yes, ma’am” is one of the most useless exchanges of all time, and they’ve used it in every goddamned spot so far, even ones where they only have 30 seconds or a minute to sell people on the film. It wasn’t until this week that they released one that actually gave us some idea of the plot. Also, dub-step.

For the record, I’ve heard good things so far, and the screenplay was co-written by an Oscar winner and a Pulitzer Prize winning-novelist. And yet to sell this, they went with “You are John Carter?” “Yes, I am John Carter!” “Help us, John Carter!” “I will, for I am John Carter!” “All hail John Carter!”

I don’t bag on John Carter because I have an unfair view of Brad Bird, Disney or Pixar. I bag on John Carter because the trailers look terrible and the idea as a whole is stale. The fact that it would have to make $400 million to break even elevates my skepticism as movies that cost hundreds of millions to make usually lack substance, hence their huge marketing budgets.

They shot themselves in the ass by removing “From Mars” from a nearly 100-year old, somewhat well-known property’s title. You can’t blame marketing for that – that’s a decision from the top to avoid being cursed by the cowflop that was Mars Needs Moms. As if to retreat, the posters all are exaggerated red and yellow, just so we all know this is set on Mars and not Earth. Again, not much marketing could do about this – decisions from the top. I’m sure the “from Earth” dialogue is carefully chosen by the bigwigs – the biggest of which (MT Carney) is now replaced – to once again make sure we all know this is not on our planet. It’s a clusterfuck, but the marketing peeps can only do so much within such ridiculous guidelines.

This is exactly what I hate about the way studio execs think. No one in their right minds would see “John Carter of Mars” and think “Ooh, is this like Mars Needs Moms because Mars? Forget that.” No one even remembers Mars Needs Moms. No one even knew about Mars Needs Moms when it was out. The word “Mars” is not some psychological trigger. People are so paranoid about ridiculous shit they end up shooting themselves in the foot.

“For the record, I’ve heard good things so far, and the screenplay was co-written by an Oscar winner and a Pulitzer Prize winning-novelist.”

I wouldn’tcare if Coppolla himself harnessed the magical fat in George Lucas’ neck pouch and wrote/directed this film, it still looks less entertaining than the poop logs I drop while on the pot! The name sucks too, John Carter should be a black dude going around Mars impregnating space hoes Tracy Morgan style, they got this square instead?

*spoilers*
White Man goes to another planet and takes over. Along the way he kills everyone who gets in his way (be they green, red, black or even white), makes a few friends, gets a dog and marries the hottest chick on the planet before destroying their religion.
*/spoilers*

When the commercial came on during the SB I made the mistake of saying out loud that I think it looked good, to which my assorted friends and assholes I didn’t know called me everything but a good Christian white man. My defense was this, it’s not going to be The Godfather. It’s not going to be Pulp Fiction or In Bruges or Dirty Harry. It’s a family friendly, Disney adventure movie like Pirates of the Caribbean or National Treasure. These aren’t fucking Citizen Kane. But, as far as pure, dumb entertainment, they do a great job.

You don’t buy a Limp Bizkit CD looking for Radiohead, why do people think you’d watch John Carter looking for Flags of Our Fathers?